Unknown Apple IDs prompted on iPad 3

My client recently purchased an iPad v3 and to set it up, restored their iPad v2's configuration from their iCloud backup. All appears to be working except:

At random times during the day, or when they attempt to purchase or update apps from the App Store, they get no less than 10 prompts to login with 10 different Apple IDs the user has never seen before.

One of them, willsalovitch@gmail.com was seen in a similar context by another iTunes Store user, two years ago.

Not sure what we're dealing with here, if it's a bug or a hack. Other mystery Apple IDs we're seeing include mitchell@abergel.com, paulessrig@gmail.com, and bananabraniac@aol.com.

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Does the user have music, apps or video on the iPad that was perhaps downloaded less than "legitimately" or gotten from friends (via email, or copied from someone else's hard drive)? The email addresses are perhaps the addresses/iTunes accounts of the original purchasers of the music (from a time before Apple did away with DRM), and the iPad would need you to enter their iTunes store passwords to authorize playing the music.

I would bet that if you delete all the music from the device, you'll stop getting these prompts.

RobertAtFoxAuthor Commented: 2013-01-09

Akahan,

Thanks! - we did examine / explore that possibility. None of the email addresses belong to any of his friends, family, or anyone else with access to the iPad - that's one thing that makes it so unnerving. However, we are working with Apple and one possibility is that his apps are somehow damaged/corrupted and link now in error to other users - so we're trying the approach you mentioned, now.

The addreses may well not belong to his friends. They may belong to whoever his friend got the music from...or whoever THEY got it from...or whoever THEY got it from. It could be a friend of a friend of a friend, or even someone who uploaded the music to a "sharing" site, and has no connection with anyone your iPad's owner knows.

Music has a way of passing through many hands on its way to its destination these days...

Anyway, my money is still on: delete all the music/video content, and you'll stop seeing the messages...

I agree with akahan
But if the ipad 2 was jailbroken then it might also be from having eligible apps on it

RobertAtFoxAuthor Commented: 2013-04-25

After much discussion with our corporate team at Apple, it appears it was some sort of corruption on the iPad. They begrudgingly admitted to seeing this issue on a few other iPads and the only solution was to wipe and restore; these popups amounted to 'false positives' that were caused by damaged info on my execs iPad.

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Accepting own comment because Apple enterprise support admitted that there was some kind of corruption in the iPad's OS that caused it to randomly attempt authentication to random Apple IDs. An obscure issue but it has happened to other iPad customers.